T w e n t y S i d e d
I’ll spare you a recap of what’s going on in the Scufflescaffold, because this wizard I found bravely cowering in a hidden chamber has furnished a fabulous one. Take it away, Clarentavious.
So some old man’s yelling at me–in “very small words”–to go find his chambers and get a bunch of McGuffin plates spinning. Which is a pretty good recap, and it certainly jogs my recollection of how much I hate this wizard. I do have a few follow-up questions:
Where. Your. Quarters?
Are. Legs. Broken?
Considering. I’m. Undergraduate. Why. You. Make. ME. Find. YOUR. Quarters. Fix. YOUR. Problem.
Is. Condescension. Coping mechanism. For. Atrophied genitalia?
Oh, what’s that, Clarence? Since all this game’s dialogue is prewritten, you have no way of responding to my shitty antagonistic statements? Wonder what that feels like.
Anyway, this doesn’t materially affect my approach, which is to continue straining the labyrinth for mission-critical bullshit. I’ve now filled in enough of the mostly-useless map that I can at least get an idea of where to look next, in between frustrating jumping puzzles and scuffles with the locals.
I learn something new and baffling every other time I get into a combat. Remember how I mentioned dremora throw balls of magical explosive energy? Remember how I mentioned they’d sometimes accidentally get enemies or themselves in the blast radius in their fruitless attempts to kill me with energy I’m immune to? It turns out that wasn’t what was happening at all. Like most tourists, I’ve shot my mouth off without really understanding the intricacies of dremora culture.
My first clue that something else is going on came when I kited the above monster. In my attempt to get him one-on-one I edged inside the detection range of a dremora–waiting patiently, alone, with sword drawn. He twitched toward me–instantly registered the presence of an intruder, turned to the nearest wall, and began blasting himself with head-height bursts. I was so taken aback I didn’t take a screenshot, not that I would have captured anything but special effects and dremora-induced dremora agony. Please keep in mind that none of his nukes were even kind of in my direction, nor the direction of any other living creature. It killed him approximately four times faster than I could have reached him. Besides his eyebrows, I have no idea what was going through his mind.
Clearly there’s something going on here. I’ll be sure to ask the next dremora that doesn’t flash-fry his face off what that is.
Nothing that fights in melee is much of a hassle as long as you’ve got room to maneuver. Bethesda never did get around to fixing a quirk of their 2.5D combat: as long as you can move faster than opponents, you can carefully backpedal at such a pace that you can hit your opponents and they can’t hit you. It’s not idiot-proof, but even when done crudely it turns impossible fights into fair ones and fair fights into routs. Once, in Daggerfall, I put down a few hundreds city guards in my daring level 1 heist of a Formal Brassiere, because that game was a Venn overlap of horny and stupid.
This is a funny engine for RPGs and roguelikes: strategy and skill and level don’t factor in unless you really want them to. Either a challenge can be cheesed to the point that it’s trivial or the game’s so glitched or obtuse that no tactic can save you.
I come across a room of floating platforms and walkways, which is the five by five room with a locked chest of the Battleverse. At the end of it is a wooden elevator situated over a pool of lava. I’ll let my dremora friend explain its function.
I take the elevator up. There is a handful of chumps.
I deal out a handful of lumps. Lumps not pictured.
Then, after ascertaining that there is nothing useful in any of the manifold chests or bags in this room, I save. Then I wait for the elevator to come back. And wait. And, uh, wait some more.
…
Uh-oh.
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The elevator got into a fight with a Dremora
No, the elevator realized it was in the presence of a hostile PC, committed suicide as fast as possible. poor thing was reading the wrong part of the script.
When the elevator was filling out its character sheet, it took “critical weakness to changes in altitude.”
Clearly a victim of its own defocused temporal perception again, it is now sulking in the basement.
You too?
My favorite were the guards on horseback. You’d think they could move faster than the guards not equipped with equine turboboosters, but you’d be wrong.
Of course the guards with horses moved slower than the guards without horses! Do you have any idea how much a horse weighs? Poor guys are lucky they didn’t explode when going over encumbrance limits from having a horse in their inventory.
I mean, at least they weren’t wearing armour. That would have been a real disaster.
Man, that facial expression with a question mark beside it really makes him look appropriately confused.
Every time I see the full character picture, I can’t help but think something has changed EVERY time to make him look even more ridiculous. Yes, even the times when nothing’s different. It just looks even more silly on every repeat viewing.
OUR HERO, LADIES AND GENTS.
It’s the FACE that always gets me. The unchanged, yet always appropriate face of confusing and despair.
When I look at that close up of the face All I can think of is this.
Just wanted to say how much I am enjoying this series. My second favorite Rutskarn content after his Good Robot ‘contribution’ posts*.
*As measured by how close I came to rupturing important internal organs due to laughter while reading it.
He should really redo all his Vatsy and Bruno stuff over here. That was his best work.
Hi Rutskarn! I have only the most limited experience with Bethesda’s games. I tried to play Daggerfall once upon a time, but the combat and the dungeon design–good God, the dungeon design–have left me with something of an aversion to their work. Despite that, I really enjoyed your Bethesda retrospective and I have especially enjoyed this series, which has been hilarious.
The point being, you deserve more than nine comments. So here’s number ten. Thanks!
Aye, I often find myself wanting to comment on these pieces but find myself … not intimidated as such, but sort of feeling something of a shamefaced insufficiency somehow! I’m constantly lightly stunned at the quality of the writing, and that’s really not the best state of mind for the generation of the pithiest comments. That’s my excuse, anyway! :D
I think Scufflescaffold is my new favorite word. I only wish I could picture more… some… any opportunities to use it.
Yes, I’m having a very similar issue with ‘battlenooks and spirecrannies’ from last week.
Uh-oh. The old “saving when you don’t realize you’re stuck” gotcha.
Oh man, even assuming a game ALLOWS multiple save files, I’m absolutely terrible at remembering to use them.